Regina Scully: The House I Live In
August 3 – September 28, 2019
Opening Reception: August 3, 6-9pm
*In conjunction with Hancock Whitney White Linen Night
Octavia Art Gallery is pleased to present Regina Scully: The House I Live In, a solo exhibition of new works by celebrated New Orleans artist Regina Scully. This is the fifth solo exhibition of Scully’s work with the gallery.
In The House I Live In, Scully further explores and examines the atmospheres within her abstract landscapes. These new vistas of space feel futuristic and allude to other planets and parallel worlds. In these works, Scully is trying to paint what is seen as well as unseen, such as the ground and the air around it. There is a sense that one can walk or fly through the paintings by means of passages and pathways. The air and atmosphere allow the mind to go further into abstract thought while traveling through Scully’s micro-universes.
Scully states, “My father was a research chemist and I remember as a kid, going to his lab and smelling all the strange chemical smells and seeing the unusual colors bubbling and smoking out of test tubes and beakers.” The color palette in this new body of work may subconsciously reflect Scully’s memories as a child, with unexpected, man-made yellows and pinks. There is an industrial feel as well to the work, especially in the paper paintings. In these, there are suggestions of metal beams, trains and transportation, like in an underground subway.
Scully has also introduced single figures as well as tribes of figures that have come together within her landscapes. “When these figures appear in the paintings,” Scully states, “they represent migration across borders and the way people have always been seekers, wandering across terrain even on foot in search of something, since the beginning.” This searching for a sense of place that one identifies as home is often a complex notion, one that is tied to authentic emotional attachments as well as a sense of belonging and perceived memories of certain environments. David Bowie once said, “Music has been my doorway of perception and the house that I live in.” In a similar way, Scully’s paintings are worlds in which one can reside, travel through, and discover new terrain.
Regina Scully received her BFA in Painting from Rhode Island School of Design and her MFA from University of New Orleans. In 2017, Scully had a solo exhibition at the New Orleans Museum of Art entitled, Regina Scully/Japanese Landscape: Inner Journeys. Her works have been exhibited at C24 Gallery, New York; Octavia Art Gallery, New Orleans and Houston; Opera Gallery, Geneva; Prospect1.5, New Orleans; Prospect.2, Lafayette, among others. Her work is included in the Microsoft Art Collection, New Orleans Museum of Art, Capital One Art Collection, Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation Collection, and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Since 2015, Scully has annually attended the Hermitage Artist Retreat Residency Program in Manasota Beach, Florida. She was a recipient of the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Grant Award in 2017.
